Minooka TAP – Teaching History Where It Happened

Mr. Curtis’ Polish Easter

I don’t know about your house, but Easter at the Curtis place when I was younger – heck, even now that I’m older, has pretty much the same thing every year. We have our family traditions, and there’s nothing in the world that will change the way we do Easter. It’s the one holiday that our family the “Polish” way.

Christmas was a blend of my dad’s family traditions and what my mom’s family did when she was a kid.

Thanksgiving was the same, only on Turkey Day aunts and uncles got involved making it more of a mish-mosh of traditions.

Fourth of July is all-American.

Halloween was done just like everyone else.

Easter, though, Easter was different. Easter was done the way my Nana – my mom’s mom – wanted it done. The way she did it when my mom was little, the way her mom did it, the way her grandma did it. I always thought we did Easter the Polish way.

You see, my grandma was born in Warsaw in 1914, just as WWI was really getting going. Her parents were my great-grandma (we called her Busia – which my grandma swore is just Polish for “old lady”) and great-grandpa (he was called Dziadzia,I had to look up that spelling, because I never saw his name written down and it always sounded to me like my mom and Nana were saying Jah-jee).

In 1913, Busia and Jah-jee wanted out of Poland. I never found out exactly why they were leaving, but a quick look at the history book tells us that bad stuff was brewing in Central Europe 100 years ago. They got as far as London, booking passage on an ocean liner (probably like a smaller version of the Titanic, which sailed towards America a year later), but when the officials found out that Busia was pregnant (with my grandma) they sent her back. She went all the way back to Warsaw, but her husband didn’t go with her. He continued on to America – where he found a job and started his life in the South-Side of Chicago. Why Chicago? Well, did you know Chicago has more Polish speaking people than any city in the world except Warsaw? He had relatives here to help him get started in his new life while his wife and soon-to-be-born daughter were on the other side of the world.

Meanwhile, Busia went back to her village near Warsaw and my grandma was born that February. Busia escaped Poland a second time, finding her way to Copenhagen, Denmark, where she caught a boat to London – all with the baby in tow. Little did my Busia know, there was another law – one that didn’t allow babies under six months on the boats from England to America. This was in the middle of summer, and my grandma was just a little over five months old at the time. Not wanting to be turned away and sent back to Poland again, Busia quickly changed my grandma’s birthday on her documents from February 7th, 1914 to January 7th, 1914, making her just old enough to be allowed on the boat. For the rest of her life, my grandma celebrated her birthday in January.

When Busia and my grandma (Sophie) finally arrived in Chicago, they were surrounded by friends and family from Poland. They whole neighborhood was made up of Polish speaking people. The shops were all Polish, selling Polish bread at the baker, Polish meats at the butcher, Polish everything.

My mom, born more than 30 years later, grew up surrounded by these people that were so proud of their Polish heritage. Two and a half decades later, I was born into that. However, my dad wasn’t Polish, so the Curtis family traditions and those Polish traditions melded together. Except Easter. Easter always belonged to Nana.

Every spring we’d have to take a trip in the car, an hour there and an hour back, to go to the old neighborhood to get just the right Polish ham – no other ham would do. You even had to buy your noodles, your cabbage, your horseradish, your ridiculously salty butter shaped like a peaceful little lamb (my sister and I always fought over who got to chop the lamb’s head off and spread it on our bread – yup, you guessed it, just the right bread from the Polish bakery. And dessert was always just the right cookies – kolaczkis – from the old neighborhood. No other cookies would do. The biggest deal of all was the Polish sausage. We’d get just the right Polish sausage from one particular Polish butcher – you couldn’t buy the sausage anywhere else. One year my mom took a chance and bought different sausage from a different butcher. My Nana wouldn’t eat it. She swore it wasn’t Polish sausage, it was Lithuanian sausage – another year she swore the sausage was Bohemian and wouldn’t eat that either. From then on, my mom never took the risk and always bought the sausage at the right place.

I grew up thinking I had a traditional Polish Easter every year, and while my Easter was Polish-ish, it wasn’t quite the traditional cultural feast I thought it was. Just like my mom and dad’s family traditions merged together, my Nana’s Szobczak family traditions had to share the Easter table with my grandpa’s Idzekowski ways of doing things. Somehow that gave us ham, sausage, the weird salty lamb butter, noodles with cabbage, and just the right horseradish.

However, preparing for this trip to Poland, I’ve been looking at some cultural traditions, and it looks like we were getting it all wrong.

Do you know what a willow catkin is? I didn’t either. It’s this fuzzy little plant nugget that’s somewhere between a seed, a flower, and a coughed up hairball. Well, Polish tradition says that you’re supposed to take a branch of those willow catkins (also called pussy willows) to a priest, have them bless them, and eat one of those fuzzy little things on Easter. Doing that is supposed to give you good health for the remainder of the year. Maybe the fuzz nugget acts like some sort of scrub brush for your innards and makes you all cleaned out on the inside or something.

Then, there’s a special kind of bread called Paska. Before baking, the bread dough is covered in fat and decorated with a cross made of bread dough. It’s also decorated with birds and flowers, but I couldn’t find for sure it you’re supposed to stick a cardinal and a daffodil into your loaf of bread or if you just sort of carve birdish and flowery decorations into the dough. Either way, this is women’s work, and that isn’t me being sexist – it really is, because if the man of the house helps with the Paska, his mustache will go gray and the bread dough will fail.

I thought this one had to be an internet joke, but I keep finding it in different places, so it must be true. Smingus Dyngus is an Easter Monday tradition in which family members dump water over one another’s heads. Apparently this has something to do with a dude named Dingen, an ancient god of fertility and nature. The water throwing is thought to cleanse you.

We’ll miss Easter week in Poland this spring, but the celebration at the Curtis house this year might just include some willow catkins, a bird in our loaf of bread, and dumping water on grandma. I think my family will like it, as long as we get just the right pussy willow, from just the right store in the old neighborhood and my sister still gets to chop the head off the lamb butter.

My grandmother is the exact same way about following the polish traditions of Easter. But I was looking up polish Easter traditions and I found the food that you eat for Easter is blessed with holy water by a priest, who would either come to the house, or samplings of dishes would be taken to church for a communal blessing.

This is all correct, however there are many different regions in Poland and each celebrates everything just a little bit differently. My parents always fight over when to eat the blessed food because they did it differently in my Dad’s family and differently in my Mom’s family.

Thanks for pointing that out, Kamil. Poland’s a big country, so I’m sure there are tons of different traditions for every holiday depending on where you live in Poland. Just like here at home. My dad’s from Minnesota, my mom is from Chicago, and my wife is from Georgia. We end up with a strange mish-mosh of traditions at the holidays.

That was really interesting those polish traditions seem really weird and odd but also really cool. I wonder how the catkin fuz nuggets would taste like. And do the polish people paint Easter eggs like we do in America. I have always called my grandma bobcia but now I’m going to start calling her busia now that I know it means old lady. This Easter since my gramdma is polish I’m going to ask her if we could try some of these polish traditions. They sound very interesting and I would like to try these traditions next Easter.

I’ve never really thought about how my family celebrates holidays. I’m pretty sure it’s just American but you can never know. My grandparents have Dutch or Dainish blood but I’m not sure how they did Easter. It makes me want to look into it.

America is a pretty weird place when you think about it. We have this blend of every other culture’s traditions. One of the cool thing about traveling is seeing those customs and becoming more aware of what our ancestors did.

My family just does the ‘get an Easter basket filled with candy’ stuff. When I was younger we would do egg hunts in the house. We don’t even have a fancy dinner. We might grab a special dessert, though.

I haven’t really thought of how other cultures celebrate holidays. This surely beats my family’s “tradition”. I wish my family was Polish! My moms parents are German but their traditions didn’t carry. Although I do like the idea of dumping water on my grandmas head :).

I love almost all of those foods. The only foods I haven’t tried yet are the willow catkin, lamb shaped butter, and the Paska bread. I’ll have to get some this Easter and try it out. Usually in my house we cook lots of breakfast foods like eggs and bacon. I’ll tell my parents to try some Polish Easter traditions this year.

My family does the Easter egg hunt stuff but sometimes its really weird. now that im older im the only one who can get the dangerous and the ones too high for the kids. My Tia’s put little slips of paper with prizes or food on them. Later you trade them in for said food and prizes. But my Tia Julia always puts money in some of them. No idea why slhe does it but hey, who am i kill a tradition with money in easter eggs.

My great grandma was 100% polish and when she was alive every year we went to church on Easter and we would all have a willow catkin! Also at the church they would give us little pieces of bread but I’m not sure if it was paska!

The lamb as a symbol goes back thousands of years. Way back in the day, a lot of pagan religions would sacrifice lambs to their gods. Christians believe that Jesus gave himself up, allowed himself to be crucified, for all of mankind – a pretty big sacrifice – so the lamb has become a symbol of Jesus. Easter is a celebration of Jesus returning from the great beyond, so Easter decorations are full of lambs. The big question is where do the bunnies and eggs come from?

I just came across your post while researching the english word for Weidenkätzchen (willow catkin) and thought I’d add that here in Germany we decorate our homes with them for Easter, but we don’t eat them. They go in a vase and you trim them with colourful eggs. Really enjoyed reading about you polish traditions!

Picked this item up on a search referring to willow catkins. I was thinking of my 4th grade teacher, Sister Amata from the Felician order of nuns, who was Polish. She used to make us sing this song about pussy willows. Fuzzy pussy willow, pretty little things, growing in the sunshine of a merry spring! That was it. I can imagine her thinking of each of us eating one of those hairball catkins and getting it stuck in our throats just to shut us up. There were 44 of us in her classroom. 44! Enjoyed the shared heritage.

My Grandmother could no longer purchase the butter lamb already made. Being resourceful, she bought a plastic mold for making chocolate and softened the butter and then popped it out the mold when it got cold again. When I moved I was shocked to find out no other church blessed Easter baskets. It’s a lovely tradition.

There is an old polish legend saying that as long as people will paint eggs for easter, devil will stay in hell and won’t come to earth. You might think all of those traditions are originating from catholic church, but in fact the story reaches much before that. All the traditions come from Slavic tribes that lived on the area of Eastern Europe, Poland and Russia mostly. After making Poland a country in 996 (christianizing it and accepting Pope) those traditions were so deeply rooted in people’s minds that had to become a part of christian church. You cannot find those customs anywhere else in the world, even in Catholic countries. Now with eggs the story is this: every symbol, every colour and shape means something. Drawing some symbols had a magical power; as mentioned willow cutkins were meant to bring health, beauty and fertility, but there is so many more symbols! Egg itself symbolises life, birth, long life and vitality. Plant: rebirth, immortality. Chicken feet: fertility and harvest. Ear of grain: good harvest, lot of food. Apple tree: knowledge, ability, skills. Pine tree: progress, strength, confidence. Wheat: home, hearth, family. These are just few. Colours: 1 yellow. Light, wisdom, purity, happiness, love. 2 orange. Strenght, endurance, grandeur. 3 red. Magic, love, happiness. 4 green. Freshness, hope, fertility. 5 black. Death, fear, eternity (black and white eggs were painted for dead, passage eggs). 6 white. Birth, rebirth, purity, innocence. 7 brown. Abundace. 8 violet. Faith, loyality, patience. 9 blue. Sky, air.
I hope this helps and will bring you some ideas of what to paint on your Easter eggs 🙂